Living Here, July 25, 2018

Living Here

The stop signs are now installed at the intersection of Broad Street and Geneva. The old sign in the center of the intersection is gone. Gone. Really. The new safety bars for crossing are painted on the streets so the stop sign intersection is now well marked. For the first year, or so, though, be careful at that intersection. People are creatures of habit and some won’t pay attention to the new change.

The Lake Geneva Police and Fire Commission
The Police and Fire Commission is supposed to be autonomous, meaning that the decisions of the members of the commission have the ultimate decision-making authority over the Police and Fire departments and that the commission is acting independently from any external control. The real purpose in making the Police and Fire Commission autonomous is to keep the control over the Police and Fire departments independent of politics, the city’s administration, religious affiliations or some other organization’s control, and to enable them to act in the best interest of the community. However, since all the members of the City of Lake Geneva’s Police and Fire Commission, except for the representative from Geneva Township, are current or previous city officials of the City of Lake Geneva, how can the Police and Fire commission be said to be truly independent of any undue influence, direction or control of/or by the City officials of Lake Geneva?

This influence became suspicious when a former city administrator was appointed as a member of the commission, and Connors as mayor appointed Hartz to the commission, and then later Hartz as mayor appoints Connors to the commission. “Something gives the impression of collusion! Individually, any member of the commission appointed is fine, but collectively old office-holders defeat the intent and purpose of the commission. Stacking the Police and Fire commission with ex-city officials (just as stacking any city commission, committee or city department with members or ex-members of any single affiliation) leads to the thinking of that group controlling that commission, committee or the department’s actions and decisions, rather than having those decisions reflect the interest of the residents of the city as a whole.

The state has been aware of this type of problem in which one political party dominates the police and fire commission and the state has included a restriction on party affiliation and that is that not more than half of the members of the police and fire commission can be of the same political party. There are also restrictions on nepotism, as well as ethical restrictions with related businesses. Nothing addresses or restricts other associated or understood relationships in government. To get “A” you must be part of “B”, it is not a law, it is not said, but in the City of Lake Geneva, it is real. Furthermore, any law that would try to restrict associations would be potentially worse than not having a law. But by pointing out that such affiliations exist within the city, they may become more obvious to others and the hope is those good people will take steps to correct these imbalances with new appointments, and with higher practices within some of the city departments.

Purple Martin birds now have little homes or houses up and down the streets of Lake Geneva.
That’s thanks to the most excellent and active Lake Geneva Avian Committee. Five thousand dollars was raised to help and protect these lovely flying creatures, and making waves in the social media world, the committee has gone so far as to establish a GoFundMe site on the Internet to continue raising money and helping the birds.

Utah Blaine Oborn is leaving and he will be missed a whole lot. His replacement remains undiscovered, unfound and un-interviewed. The city has decided to seek help by hiring a professional recruiter (head-hunter). The head-hunter representative wanted to talk about how great his company was and what it would do to help fill the position, but the council decided that it didn’t need to hear from him. Just find somebody!

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